Last month, Donald Trump said America has two enemies—“the outside enemy” and “the enemy from within.” The latter, he asserted, is the “more dangerous” of the two, continuing ominously that the threat could be neutralized, if he were president, by the US military.
That remark hardly exists in isolation. The former president’s often-inflammatory rhetoric has taken an increasingly violent turn in the run-up to his face-off against Kamala Harris.
Critics have, more loudly and consistently than ever before, labeled Trump a fascist, especially in the wake of a recent report that he openly praised Adolf Hitler to White House staff and last week’s hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden—the same venue where American Nazis rallied in support of the German dictator in 1939.
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Though he denies being a Nazi or a fascist, Trump has made it clear that, from his viewpoint, the “enemy from within” includes Democrats and “radical left lunatics,” people who criticize him, and anyone whose actions conflict with his narrow concept of America.
With the presidential election just days away, here are just a few of the many individuals and groups who have been the targets of Trump’s violent rhetoric.
Liz Cheney
Criticizing her foreign policy stances and her endorsement of his opponent, among other issues, Trump called the former Wyoming representative, one of his most outspoken Republican critics, “dumb as a rock” and a “war hawk” at a campaign event on Oct. 31—and then his words grew more charged still.
“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” he said. “Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Mark Milley
Milley served as the chair of Trump’s Joint Chiefs of Staff for some three years, but that didn’t stop the current Republican nominee from suggesting in September 2023 that the retired army general deserved to be executed over a phone call he made to reassure China in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, even though officials in his administration had signed off on the call.
Joe Biden
Trump in March shared a video purportedly shot on a highway in Long Island, New York. The video showed two Trump supporters’ ostentatiously decorated trucks, the latter featuring a decal of President Joe Biden hog-tied, as if kidnapped, on the tailgate.
Mike Pence
Trump made a number of comments that encouraged or condoned violence on Jan. 6, 2021, as his supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to prevent then-Vice President Mike Pence and the Senate from certifying the 2020 election.
“I don‘t f---ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me” Trump said to his team, before delivering his address that day, according to testimony.
In a public tweet, meanwhile, Trump wrote, “Get smart Republicans. FIGHT!”
His rhetoric was no less inflammatory when he spoke to his followers that afternoon: “You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” he told the crowd. “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
And as rioting was underway, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify.”
Footage showed Trump’s supporters reading the post and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
Members of the press
Trump has suggested that he would send reporters to prison if they don’t reveal their sources.
“You get the information very easily,” Trump said at a rally in November 2022. “You tell the reporter, ‘Who is it?’ and the reporter will either tell you or not. And if the reporter doesn’t want to tell you, it’s bye-bye. The reporter goes to jail. And when the reporter learns that he’s going to be married in two days to a certain prisoner, that’s extremely strong, tough, and mean, he will say... ‘You know, I think I’m going to give you the information. Here’s the leaker. Get me the hell out of here!’”
Racial justice protesters
As crowds in Minnesota—and across the United States—protested the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in May 2022, Trump took to Twitter to urge further violence against them, sharing a slogan with a racist history: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
When protesters filled the streets around the White House, Trump said, according to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s memoir, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”
(Trump has denied making the statement.)
Illegal immigrants
One of Trump’s most often-repeated campaign promises has been a vow to come down hard on illegal immigration. Here, too, his rhetoric has become outright menacing.
“Getting them out will be a bloody story,” Trump said at a September rally in Wisconsin, referring to illegal immigrants in Colorado. “They should have never been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”
What could actually happen if Trump is elected?
Trump’s aggressive rhetoric has come alongside vows to prosecute his political foes, including Biden, Harris and former President Barack Obama among many others. As noted, he has also threatened to use military force on American citizens.
But just how credible are these threats? To what extent could Trump exact revenge if he returns to the White House?
Legal experts told NBC News that, under a new Trump administration, the Justice Department and FBI could carry out his threats, especially if Trump manages to install allies in key positions within the organizations.
“A corrupt US attorney with one corrupt prosecutor can do enormous damage,” explained NBC legal analyst (and former US attorney) Joyce Vance.
As president, Trump would also be commander-in-chief of the US military. Former military officials are worried that Trump would try to follow through on his threat to use the armed forces for his domestic whims.
“To use the US military in terms of domestic law enforcement, it’s not the American way,” John Kelly, Trump’s one-time White House chief of staff and a former general, told The Washington Post. “The fear is he will tell them to do something illegal, and that’s a really bad thing to do.”
